


Healing Touch

by Faylette



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon Age Kink Meme, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 11:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3172358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faylette/pseuds/Faylette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Solas' workaholic tendencies don't bode well for his back; Inquisitor Lavellan offers, or demands, to give him a massage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Healing Touch

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this prompt: http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/11864.html?thread=46354264#t46354264

Solas tilts his head to the side and winces at the sharp crack from his neck. He ignores the ache, still bent over his desk. It is long into the night, he assumes, though with the absence of windows in his makeshift study, he cannot be certain. He continues to scrutinize the pages of the hefty tome that the council had been generous enough to acquire for him. He had not expected that the writer of the work would be so frugal, to put it nicely. The letters were so small that they were nearly unreadable, and he guessed that they had to have been inked in with sparrow feather quills, or something of the sort, to achieve such minuteness. As if that wasn’t a sufficient strain to the eyes, there was absolutely no space between each line, rendering each page an uninterrupted block of text, and a series of poor rebindings had cut off part of the side of every single page, leaving blanks for him to fill in as best as he could. It was a nightmare to read, and if it wasn’t for its engrossing and relevant content, Solas wouldn’t be hunched over the damn thing trying to decipher each tiny, aggravating word.

All of a sudden, a mug is set down on the edges of his overtired peripheral vision. “You know, you’re the last person I’d expect to always see awake.”

He turns to see Ellana Lavellan, a mug of her own pressed to her lips, and flinches at the sudden pain in his brow. He instinctively clutches his head, eyes clasped shut, unwillingly revealing his pain.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. Although he cannot see her, Solas can picture her face, so concerned. Even with his head pounding at every sound that intrudes into his little corner of Skyhold, her voice is like amber honey to him.

“A headache, nothing serious,” he replies curtly, rubbing the side of his neck with a slight groan.

An instant goes by before Ellana breaks the silence. “You need to unwind. Come to my quarters in five minutes.”

She is gone before Solas can conjure a response, and he is left alone with his headache, his book, a mug, and his thoughts. He tries to ignore both the headache and the obvious thoughts, closes the book, and picks up the mug. Warmth permeates through the ceramic, soothing the soreness in his hands that he had not even noticed. The scent wafts up: warm spiced milk, like something a restless child would be sent off to bed with. He finds himself chuckling at the message, intended or not, and takes a sip. Sweet, but not overly so, and simply but effectively flavoured. He worries that he’s lost track of time when he realizes that the mug is empty, and forces himself to his feet, wincing at the strain in his back. He makes his way to the Inquisitor’s quarters, avoiding eye contact with the various patrolling soldiers he encounters, with their interests piqued by Solas’ very distinct route.

When he reaches his destination, as he ascends the final set of stairs, he sees Ellana there, lit on one side by moonlight, on the other by faint candlelight. In the dimness, he can make out a smile on her face.

“Good,” she says, approaching him, “I almost thought I’d have to drag you up here.”

“That would not have been necessary, I assure you.”

Her bare feet shuffle in place for a moment before she speaks again. “Well, then… there was something I wanted to tell you.”

“Anything, vhenan.”

She nods, assured. “Solas.” Deep breath. Bright eyes on him. She is beautiful, peerless, achingly irresistible. He leans in to kiss her.

“Your posture is horrendous.”

His eyes narrow in his confusion as he backs away. “My posture?”

“You’re always hunched over your desk or painting, and I never see you stretch — your neck must have more knots than a fishing net. I know you’re suffering.”

He smiles at the vigor she puts into lecturing him, that exasperation borne of genuine worry, even as his bewilderment persists. “Your concern for me is touching. I will see to this, you have my word.”

“No, I’m pretty sure you’re beyond fixing this by yourself,” she tells him, gesturing a hand toward her bed. “You’re getting a massage. Take your shirt off.”

“Ah, so this was all a ploy to get me undressed and in your bed?”

“What? No… but do exactly that.”

Solas cannot be sure if the colour he sees in her face is blushing or the hue of the fire, but she is lovely all the same. He doesn’t get a long look anyway; Ellana turns around, opens the chest at the foot of her bed, and begins to rummage through its contents, muttering something about essence of elfroot and embrium something or other. He leaves her to her apparent alchemy to undo his belt, letting it fall to the floor, and pulls his shirt over his head, taking longer than he would care to admit to avoid groaning at the pain in his shoulders. When he finally removes the fabric that obscured his sight, he sees Ellana in front of him, facing him, with a small glass vial in her hand and her eyes focused down, away from his face, in an intent stare. She catches herself with a little jump when Solas steps forward, and then sheepishly turns her gaze away. “Take a seat.”

He sits cross-legged on the plush feather mattress and its embroidered Orlesian sheets, beneath its silken canopy, an excessive luxury the likes of which he had not experienced in quite some time, with comfort that he cannot deny. Ellana crawls past him, settling down behind him, and he hears glass clinking and smells a familiar earthy fragrance. A moment later, her hands, warm and slick with oil, slide across his shoulders, glazing over his skin with her herbal concoction. There is already some sense of ease in him, even just at her warm touch.

“Let me know if anything hurts, all right?” Her words are soft, and her breath flits on the back of his ear.

“Of course.”

Her hands, surprisingly soft for how often they have a bow in them, mirror each other in broad strokes against his shoulders, and then against the nape of his neck, where she first concentrates her efforts. Her motions are slow and deliberate — it is obvious that her hands are well-versed in the choreography.

“How did you come across such a talent, vhenan?” he asks.

“You know I’m a hunter in my clan. Hunters get sore, we help each other out.” Solas thinks he hears a soft laugh, so slight that it very well could have been his imagination, before she speaks once more. “Closing up tears in the sky isn’t the only magic I can do with my hands.”

As she says this, those supposedly magical hands, making their way up the sides of his neck, brush against his earlobes, and his sealed lips hum, if just for an instant.

“Sensitive spot?” she asks, already aware of the answer. “Good to know.”

“Shall I expect this knowledge to be used against me at a most inopportune time?”

“Well, where’s the fun if you expect it?”

Apparently sated with her mischief, she rubs her thumbs in small, focused circles, shifting around until the entirety of his nape has been tended to. She caresses the curve between his neck and shoulder, kneading the tense muscle beneath, attentively smoothing out the kinks that have been hounding him with every miniscule movement.  It is some time before Solas realizes that his eyes are shut, not to wince in pain, but to sink into this sensation, into her touch, firm but ginger, into the affection that he did not know he coveted so strongly. He cannot determine how long Ellana had been massaging his shoulders, spiriting away their hurt, but when she removes her hands, he wants more, greed be damned.

“Lie on your stomach,” she directs him and he complies without hesitation, clutching and burying his face into one of her pillows. “I almost wonder if you’d do anything I’d say right now.”

“Perhaps I would,” he mumbles into the pillow, words proceeding thought.

He feels the mattress shift slightly as Ellana throws one leg over his prone body, straddling his thighs to support herself. Her palms touch his waist and slowly slide their way up his back. She repeats the motion, digging more deeply into his skin, rolling over bands of muscle with the edge of her palms, pressing him down further into the mattress with her strong arms. This time, halfway up, a loud crack reverberates from his spine, causing him discomfort for but an instant, followed by a relief so pronounced that he involuntarily moans his way through it.

“That good, huh?” she asks, her voice just dripping with self-satisfaction — fairly earned, as far as Solas is concerned.

“Mmm,” he somewhat answers.

And she goes on, kneading into his muscles, making him feel  formless and soft — in his back, anyway — and filling his mind with blank, hazy thoughts. At her touch, he feels a tranquility that he is almost certain he has never experienced outside of sleep’s embrace, in the nooks of the Fade most receptive to desires of peace and rest.

And soon Solas recognizes that he is in such a place.

He awakens to mid-morning sun and brisk air through the tall windows of the Inquisitor’s quarters. His head rests on the pillow that he had grasped earlier, and a thick blanket covers his still half-unclothed body. The woman who must have tucked him in after realizing he had fallen asleep was absent from the scene, and a folded note, conspicuously placed on the pillow beside his, is testament to this. Yawning, he picks up the paper and straightens it out to read its brief contents: “Early council meeting. Take it easy. Sit up straight.”

He smiles, reading her words again just for the sake of reading them, and then sits up. He rolls his neck from side to side once, and once more, and is genuinely baffled by the lack of pain. He arches his back to stretch out his spine — not even the slightest ache. Humbled by any previous doubts he had of Ellana’s capability, Solas gets out of bed, recovers his clothes, and leaves the quarters, taking her note with him.

Every step he takes is light and free. His body had ached for so long that he had honestly forgotten how it was meant to feel. He feels as if he could skip back to his room, if he had any inclination to, anyway. Perhaps Ellana was not exaggerating about her enchanted hands. He passes through the halls, at last returning to his place of work and study, ready to tackle that book again.

No, he supposes that would be too much to ask for. The sound of a single man slowly clapping echoes against the walls.

“Sleep well?” asks Dorian, lounging in Solas’ high-backed chair with his feet up on his desk, ankles crossed over. A smug grin appears beneath his moustache, somehow also just as smug.

The sudden pain in Solas’ temples is not from a strained neck muscle, and he can at least be thankful for that. “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

“No need to be coy. Here I was last night, thinking to myself, ‘My, whatever could our dear, virtuous Inquisitor be up to, inviting Solas up to her private chambers?’”

“Are you always in the habit of eavesdropping on the affairs of others?”

Dorian points up, presumably to where he usually lingers. “Sound carries, and do allow me to finish. Where was I… oh, yes. ‘Star-gazing? Quilting? A riveting game of chess, perhaps?’ Oh, but how naive I was.” He thrusts out an open palm, directing a nonexistent audience’s attention to Solas, as if he were an exhibit on display. “Just look at you: a spring in your step, limber as a spring chicken, colour in your face — why, I swear I even saw a smile!”

Solas glares at him.

“Fine, fine,” Dorian sighs, swinging his legs back over onto the floor and standing up with an adroit grace. “Do let the charming lady attend to you more often — it might make you tolerable company one day.”

Solas takes his reclaimed seat, rolling back his shoulders before settling back into his study. “Possible; closing up tears in the sky isn’t the only magic she can do with her hands.”

 


End file.
